Group Interaction
Pillar #9 – Group Interaction
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Group interaction allows you to form relationships with prospective
customers before they’re even aware of you or your company.
Pillar #9, Group Interaction covers:

•Participating in discussion forums

•Social networking groups

•Answering questions posed by other people

•Commenting on other people’s blogs

Participating in discussion forums
Discussion forums are websites on which that you can interact on to build up
your reputation as a figure of authority within your own industry.

One thing that you should ensure that you take advantage of is something called
a signature message. A signature message is a common footer, which appears at
the bottom of every post made on a forum. The great benefit of having a
signature messages is that you can generally also include a keyword-rich link
back to your website. This means that as well as driving visitors back to your
website from these forums, the search engine optimization benefits are also
extremely valuable.

Industry Specific Forums
The important aspect of using forums as an effective form of internet marketing
is to make sure that you interact on forums that are relevant for your business. In
other words, think about your target market, and the kinds of forums where you
target are likely to gather.

You should use search engines to find the right forums for your industry – by
entering your keyword phrase and the term ‘forum’. For example you could
search for ‘golf equipment’ and the word ‘forum’ or ‘sales management’ and the
word ‘forum’. The exact keyword phrase of course depends on your industry –
and your own Wordtracker research.
Deciding which forum is right for you

Once you’ve made a list of a few forums which may be worthwhile to interact
on, the next step is to decide which of those forums would be most beneficial for
you.

The first method of ‘weeding out’ less valuable forums isn’t tangible. It’s simple
a matter of you browsing through each of the selected forums and deciding
which of the forums house participants which are more likely to be your
customers in the future.

Once you’ve reduce the list to no more than around five forums, it’s time to
analyze the approximate amount of visitors that each of the forums gets. The can
be done by using a combination of Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank.

In my personal experience, an Alexa Rank of lower than 200,000 (the lower the
better) and a Google Rank of four or better indicates that a forum could provide
a reasonable return to make it worthwhile participating in on an ongoing basis.

How many forums?
You should try to find about ten forums to begin with in search engines – this
should ensure that you limit the chance of missing out and not discovering
forums that are very relevant for your business.

After choosing your ten forums, manually knock a few forums off this list after
reviewing some of the posts before reducing the list further by choosing the
forums with the best Google Page Ranks and Alexa Ranks.

Starting to interact on forums
Once you’ve reduced your list of forums down to about three, double-check that
each of the forums allow live signature links, then register a profile of each on
your chosen forums and start interacting with the existing members.

Bear the following thought in mind, though. A forum is a tool where members
meet, interact and help each other on a particular topic area. Do not overtly talk
about you’re your own products and services – and certainly not within your
first few posts. If you simply contribute in a giving manner in forums posts then
fellow members will be able to find out more about you from your signature
link. That’s all the self-promotion that you should participate in.

Case study – how Freddie Faldo discovers and interacts on golf forums
If Freddie Faldo wanted to discover the best golf forum for him to participate in
online, he’d begin by searching for ‘golf forums’ on Google. One of the first
forums which comes up after conducting this search is golfforum.com (Figure
9.1).

Figure 9.1 – The Golf Forum Online
A sample post from ‘The Golf Forum’

By interacting on this forum, he can see that some people use the signature link
to describe the golf clubs that they use. This means that if Freddie has a golf
equipment shop, he could use his signature link to describe the kind of
equipment on offer in his shop. Freddie should ideally use keyword phrases that
link to specific categories on his Golf Equipment website. This too may be a
valuable method of building keyword-rich links to your website.

Remember that the less common the signature links are on the forum you choose
to interact on, the more chance you have of driving visitors through to your
website from that signature link. In other words, if you’re involved in an
industry which generally isn’t that knowledgeable of different methods of
internet marketing, signature links on forum posts are more likely to be fruitful
when it comes to driving traffic to your site.

Case study – Jane Jobs & Sales Recruitment Forums
Like Freddie Faldo, Jane Jobs should search for forums that are appropriate for
her business, using a search term like ‘Sales Recruitment Forums’. When you
conduct this search using Google, one of the first forums which you should come
across is called highprobsell.com – a Sales Discussion Board which may well be
an ideal discussion area for her industry sector.

My example – Digital Point Forums
One of the forums which I have consistently posted at in the past is called Digital
Point Forums – forums.digitalpoint.com (Figure 9.2). At the bottom of every post
that I make, I have a message which says “Free Report – The 10 Biggest SEO
Mistakes” and a link to where to download that report.

I’ve made a few hundred posts so far on the Digital Look Forums, which means I
have a few hundred posts that contain this marketing message at the bottom of
each forum post.

As long as if your chosen forum supports signature links, they will appear on
every post you make in that forum. Search engines can pick up these signature
links easily when they crawl the forum, making it another great .

In addition to my ‘10 Biggest SEO Mistakes’ link on my signature in figure 9.2
you can also see two other links – Internet Marketing Consultant, and Website
Promotion Marketing. These are linked to different category sections on my
website, meaning that I’m maximizing the SEO potential from my signature link
opportunity – as well as trying to make the content relevant and useful for
reader.

Figure 9.2 – forums.digitalpoint.com
A sample of one of my posts on the Digital Look forums website

Develop credibility
There are other reasons apart from search engine optimization of why
contributing to forums on an ongoing basis will benefit your business. If you
submit posts on an almost daily basis, people will start to respect you more and
treat you as a figure of authority within your industry.

Looking back at figure 9.2, you can see that the discussion topic was article
marketing. In my post – a response to another forum member, I said: “Ezine
articles worked great for this. I always include a non-HTML URL, a keyword link to the home page and a keyword link to an internal page in my author bio.”

Looking further down the same forum thread, one of the other forum users has
quoted me, adding: “Excellent advice just the way that I set my Author boxes up for
some time now and it works great.”

By quoting my post in his post, and agreeing with me, he has made me just a
little bit more of a figure of authority within the forum, and by default within the
internet marketing community.

If you participate in different forums which are relevant for your industry sector,
and offer good, free advice without trying to sell something, then forum readers
will be more likely to visit your website – overtly selling your own service in
forums is likely to be of no use – and perhaps even counter-productive.

Register and post
Having found the forum that is right for your business you will generally need
register with the forum prior to being able to submit your own posts. This is a
good thing as the effort that it takes to register is enough in itself to put-off many
spammers.

Quite often there are forum rules that only allow the use of signature links after
so many posts – commonly 10, 20 or 50. This is again to put off spammers – not
many spammers would be willing to put in the effort to write 10 posts before
being able to get a link.

Make sure that you offer especially great value content in your first few posts.
This is the stage where you develop a reputation quickly – good or bad.

Three key reasons to participate in forums
In summary, the following are three key reasons to participate in forums:

1) Build up your reputation
Once you have researched, selected and registered with appropriate forums, start
participating on these forums – asking and answering questions from other users
making sure that you offer good, independent advice.
Remember – do not actively market your own website outwith your signature
link. Start participating by demonstrating that you are a respected figure of
authority within your industry.

2) Drive relevant visitors directly to your site
Ensure that when you’re given the opportunity to include links within your
signature file that you don’t waste the opportunity. Include as many relevant
links as you can – while maintaining the readability of the signature – and
remember to use the keyword phrases which are most appropriate for your
landing pages. Finally, if allowed to, you may wish to vary the colors of your
signature links so that they ‘stand out from the crowd’.

3) Improve your search engine ranking
As mentioned above, it’s highly recommended that you include links to your
website in your signature file. If you take the time to research keyword phrases
using a tool like Wordtracker, these links will be much more likely to offer search
engine optimization benefits.

Social Networking Groups

Another increasingly important element within online group interaction is social
networking. Social networking represents represent another important route to
generate additional brand awareness, trust and more visitors. Two key examples
of social networking sites are MySpace and Facebook, both of which I’d like to
examine in a little more details below.

MySpace

Although appearing to be slightly on the wane, MySpace is still an incredibly
popular website, ranked approximately the eighth most popular website in the
world at the time of writing. When you visit MySpace and navigate towards the
‘Groups’ category, you can literally view hundreds of thousands of specialinterest
groups which have been set up by MySpace users.
For instance, at the time of writing there are 29,823 groups in the Business and
Entrepreneurs category and 48,705 members in the top group within this
category.

One of the top groups on MySpace is called Online Skill Game Business (figure
9.3). The business strategy behind their MySpace Group is to use it as a launch
pad for a future online game launch. That’s just one of what you can use a
MySpace Group for.

One benefit of building your group membership on MySpace is that MySpace
offer you the ability to send a message to all of your group members. For
instance, you can send broadcast emails to your members alerting them to
different events and special offers. As long as if you give people a reason / a
benefit to join your group, your membership level should grow. Like a rolling
snowball gathering pace, if more people join your group, more people will tell
their friends and the pace at which your group increases in size with grow
considerably.

Figure 9.3 – MySpace Group Page

Online Skill Game Business are using MySpace to advertise an upcoming
Product

The difficult part is recruiting your first few hundred members – after that the
viral effect of current members recruiting new members should take effect. That
is one of the reasons why you should try to build up a good relationship with
your list of email subscribers. If you continually provide people with good,
valuable free content, then they’re more likely to be willing to take action on any
requests that you might have – such as joining new groups.
Imagine if you have a list of 5000 subscribers, and just 5% of those subscribers are
willing to join your new MySpace Group. That would mean that you
immediately have 250 group members – enough to kick-start things nicely.

Facebook
Although much younger than its rival MySpace, Facebook is already more
popular. It does however depend on where your target market is more likely to
‘hang out’ that really determines the best social networking site for your
business. There are pros and cons to each network, with MySpace starting to
position itself as more of a site for music lovers.
Just as there are thousands of different groups, some with hundreds of
thousands of members on MySpace, there are also thousands of similar sized
groups on Facebook.

Figure 9.4 shows a group on Facebook called ‘Facebook for Business’. It offers
information about how you can conduct business on Facebook and advice on
how promote your business on Facebook. Part of this group is also an online
forum discussing topics related to Facebook for business use.

Figure 9.4 – Facebook
A Facebook group discussing ‘Facebook for business’

If you view the Discussion Boards on this Facebook group, once of the first posts
discusses tips for growing Facebook group membership numbers – so you can
see it may even be a very useful group for you to join.

Answering Questions Online
Another part of group interaction and indeed interactive marketing is answering
questions online. There are several websites which specialize in questions and
answers on various topics. Some question-based websites are on specialized
subject areas – others offer more generalized questions on which virtually
anything can be asked or answered.

Figure 9.5 – Yahoo! Answers

Yahoo! Answers
As long as if you take the time to search for the right question, you will find
questions which relate specifically to your industry segment, enabling you to
interact on a topic that relates to your business – which allows you to
demonstrate that you are an authority in your field.

Yahoo Answers
In Yahoo! Answers (figure 9.5) there are many questions and many different
categories. Categories include ‘advertising in marketing’ and ‘careers and
employment’. All you need to do to begin answering questions on Yahoo!
Answers is register for your own free account. You can then browse through to
find out what questions are being asked and begin answering questions. Just
remember that your answers should be carefully though out and relevant to the
question. You shouldn’t try to sell your company – allow your profile to do that.
The way that Yahoo! Answers works means that the person who asked the
question views all the answers before picking the answer which in their opinion
is the best answer – the most relevant response to their question. If your answer
is selected as the best response in the opinion of the question poser then it will be
displayed as the most appropriate answer to that question forever. And other
users will be able to view your profile from your answer and find out more
about you from there.

Just remember that it’s not about selling your business within the answer; it’s
about getting your profile together in the first instance – and then answering
questions in a knowledgeable, unbiased manner. If people appreciate your
answer, there is a good change that they will want to view your profile.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn offers a very similar question asking and answering service to Yahoo!
Answers. It’s effectively a social networking community for business – an online
networking service where you can build relationships and meet potential new
business partners online. To participate on LinkedIn, you begin by inviting your
friends and colleagues to participate with you on the service.

Once you start to build your list of contacts who you know personally, you are
able to view who your own contacts know (your second-tier contacts on
LinkedIn) and who their contacts know (your third-tier contacts). You’re not
able to contact those second and third tier contacts directly, but you can, just like
traditional networking, ask for an introduction to these contacts through the
people who are already your personal contacts on LinkedIn.

Because of the way that LinkedIn works, if you’re looking to meet someone with
a particular skillset, you should be able to get introduced to them through
someone you know. It could even be argued that LinkedIn is a more efficient
form of networking than traditional face-to-face networking. Imagine LinkedIn
as being like traditional business networking, but with everyone pinning a list of
their own contacts on their lapels.

Figure 9.6 – LinkedIn
LinkedIn – a social networking community for business
Although LinkedIn provides a great way to meet new business contacts, it also
offers an opportunity for you to demonstrate your knowledge on a particular
subject matter. LinkedIn has a ‘LinkedIn Answers section’ (Figure 9.6) which is
very similar to Yahoo! Answers.

When you use the LinkedIn Answers service, like Yahoo! Answers, do not
attempt to sell your company or your services overtly. You’re much better off
relying on your LinkedIn profile to sell your business on your behalf – people
will click through to look at your profile if you provide enough relevant value in
your answer to somebody’s question. There are people on LinkedIn that answer
over a hundred questions a week on the site – so obviously they find it a really
effective marketing tool for their businesses. Answering questions may or may
not be the right approach for your business but you should certainly test it to see
if it works for you.

Blog comment marketing
The final important part of group interaction is blog comment marketing. By
blog comment marketing I mean participating and interacting on other people’s
blogs – I’m not talking about your own blog here.
With blog comment marketing, like with answering questions on Yahoo!
Answers and LinkedIn Answers, make sure you avoid the temptation to market
your own products or services within your blog comments. If you make
comments on relevant, popular posts which are timely and add value, then
people who read your comments will be likely to click through to find out more
about you from your name. (With any blog comment you make you get to add
your name and your website address – your name automatically links to your
website address in the vast majority of blog systems.)

Remember to register on the service MyBlogLog that we talked about in Pillar#3
if you want an avatar (your personal image – perhaps your company logo or
your picture) to appear beside comments that you make on other people’s blogs.

How to find the best blog posts to comment on
Technorati.com is a great pace to find fresh, relevant, popular blog posts on
which to leave a comment. Technorati is essentially a directory of the latest blog
posts from the majority of the top blog in the world. The posts are categorized in
a manner which means that you don’t have to wade through piles of irrelevant
posts before finding something that’s worthwhile to comment on.

At the time of writing there are around 100 million different blogs which appear
on Technorati. You’re bond to find at least some blogs that are worthwhile
participating on! Using the previously mentioned case study of Freddie Faldo –
the fictitious golf shop owner – we’ll try searching Technorati for blogs which
talk about golf. When conduction a search on Technorati for golf blogs, one of
the first blogs we come across is called ‘The Golf Blog’. (Figure 9.7)

This would be a great blog for Freddie Faldo to start interacting on – he’d be
bound to find a recent blog post on a subject matter which was of particular
interest to him.

Figure 9.7 – The Golf Blog
The Golf Blog, where Freddie Faldo can leave comments on
The more Freddie interacts and adds a valuable contribution to each relevant
blog post, the more he will enhance his reputation in his industry, and the more
targeted traffic he will drive back to his website. Although it’s very important to
always include your website address in the form that submits your blog post
comments, the vast majority of these links to your website will include ‘nofollow’
tags. In other words, broadly speaking, these links will not help with your search
engine optimization. However, blog comments are still valuable links – they
drive relevant visitors to your website who are interested in finding out more
about you.

Subscribe to the most relevant blogs
I’d advise you to take the time to so find ten different blogs relevant to your
business. By relevant to your business I mean blogs that your target market is
likely to read as well as blogs from your industry segment.

Technorati should be your first port of call to find these 10 blogs. Another great
place to find relevant blogs is the blog directory on BlogCatalog.com. Once you
have found your chosen blogs, you can subscribe to their RSS feeds, which
means you will not have to visit their blog every time you want to find out if
they have updated their content by publishing a new post.

The most efficient way to stay updated as soon as your chosen blogs have
updated their content is to use RSS feed reading software. An example of this is
Google Reader. You can have Google Reader installed on your personalized
iGoogle home page which means that you see whenever these blogs have been
updated as soon as you open up your internet browser.

Be consistent with your adding of blog comments
When you decide that it is appropriate to start adding your comments to blog
posts on a particular blog you should do so consistently. Once people who often
read that blog see that you add comments on a regular basis, they’ll start to take
you more seriously and will be more likely to remember you.

Also, note that many blogs also offer you the facility to subscribe to comments s
well as blog posts. That way, if you do add a comment, and you wish to keep
tabs on whether or not someone has replied to your comment, then it is a good
idea to subscribe to the comments feed for individual posts as well. That way,
you can keep track of any responses to your comments and immediately choose
whether you wish to revisit the post and add to your initial comment.

Pillar # 9 – Group Interaction Summary

•Forum Participation can be a great way of building up your reputation in your
industry. By posting good quality, relevant posts in a forum (which is
relevant for your industry segment) together with using a good signature
which links to your site with a keyword phrase, you will be generating direct
traffic to your site as well as tremendously helping your search engine
rankings.

•Social networking groups such as MySpace and Facebook can help to create
awareness of your company. They can be used to promote new products that
you are releasing in the future as well as be a good way of allowing people to
let their friends know of your business. Just make sure that you initially
interact with people by aiming to assist people rather than aiming to sell them
something.

•Consider driving people on your email list towards good forum posts that
you’ve made. This will encourage interaction and quickly increase your
credibility in that forum.

•Answering questions on Yahoo! Answers and LinkedIn Answers is another
way to increase your credibility. You should post good quality answers on
relevant topics. Don’t promote your own business in the answers – aim to
drive people to your site from your profile. If your answers are good enough
and relevant enough people will want to read your profile.

•Blog comment marketing – posting comments on blogs that are relevant to
your business can also help raise your industry awareness and drive traffic to
your site. You should aim to select about 10 relevant blogs and subscribe to
them. Every time there is a relevant post, make sure you add a valuable
comment. They key with making this a success is consistency.